Kotaku East

K-Pop Pick Of The Day: Clap

Seventeen is a 13-member (I know, don’t ask) group that debuted in 2015. Since then, they’ve racked up an impressive number of hits and an adoring base of fans, putting them up there with the top dogs, despite coming from one of Korea’s smaller agencies. This group is one of the best modern examples of…

K-Pop Pick Of The Day: Ballerino

I suppose this technically falls under the purview of K-hip hop, but you’ll find fans discussing all sorts of Korean music under the broad umbrella of “K-Pop”. Which is great for us, because Leessang has put out some great, great music over the years before they disbanded recently. If you like what you hear, I…

K-Pop Pick Of The Day: Days Without You

After kicking things off yesterday with a blast from the past, let’s return K-Pop in 2018. Here’s the latest from Davichi, a ballad duo. It’s easy to think of K-Pop as sweet, saccharine bubblegum stuff, but the genre encompasses a pretty wide variety of emotions. Davichi is celebrating their 10th anniversary this year, which is…

K-Pop Pick Of The Day: Gee

Hello, Kotaku readers! I’m Seung, your friendly neighborhood social media editor (you can sometimes catch me around Facebook talking about video games). When I’m not playing video games, I’m listening to K-Pop, and the munificent Kotaku Powers-That-Be have granted me valuable storefront space to share them with you. Let’s start things off with a classic…

How To Use Chopsticks

Often foreigners in Japan are complimented on how they use chopsticks. Many, however, are not actually using them properly. Then again, neither are most Japanese people. Go figure. As Kotaku reported in 2012, only 30 percent of Japanese people in their 40s and 50s hold chopsticks correctly. Each year, that number gets smaller and smaller.…

Incredible Cardboard Creations From Japan

Monami Ohno is a Japanese cardboard artist. Kotaku has previously featured her work, and since then, she’s continued to churn out amazing creations. Her work continues to show an amazing attention to detail, while some are larger in scale. This Mechagodzilla is nuts. See? Incredible! So is this DeLorean. Ohno studied art at university, and…

Tips for Drawing Backgrounds

Thomas Romain is a terrific artist working in the anime industry in Tokyo. Previously, he showed how to draw detailed buildings. This time, we’re going to learn from him how to draw backgrounds. Romain has an impressive resume, including art direction on Symphogear and mecha design for Space Dandy. Over numerous months, he’s been kind…

This YouTuber Can Probably Eat More Than You 

This is Yuka Kinoshita. And today, we are going watch her eat so much fucking food. In Japanese, Kinoshita is called a “gluttonous beautiful woman” (大食い美女 or “oogui bijyo”). Her YouTube channel is popular and featuresvideos of her doing things like eating one hundred Chicken McNuggets: Which is a snap for her. For her, this…

Turning Real People into Anime Art

Real life looks different from anime and manga. That’s okay! But here’s what three dimensional humans might look like if they were two-dimensional drawings. This is called “nijigenka” (二次元化) or “2D-ification” in Japanese. It’s not only popular in Japan, but pretty much anywhere people are interested in anime and manga. Some 2D-ified images created by…

How Manga Characters Change and Evolve

Previously, Kotaku published an explainer on how anime art has changed in Japan over the decades. Now, let’s have a look at how some manga characters have evolved. It’s only natural for characters to evolve, and it happens any and everywhere. Heck, just compare Steamboat Willie and Mickey Mouse. What is interesting is to see…

If Dragon Ball Super Was Made in the 1990s

It’s not. It’s made now, but if Dragon Ball Super was made in the 1990s, the show would probably look something like this. On Deviant Art, the incredibly talented Salvador Vera Llanos has uploaded some images of Dragon Ball Super done up in a Dragon Ball Z art style. The results look fantastic. But first,…

Frequently Asked Questions about Visiting Japan

So, you’re going to Japan, huh? Fantastic. You might have some questions. Hopefully, I’ll have some answers. Back in 2001, I visited Japan for the first time. I liked the country so much, I ended up staying. Permanently. Over the years, I have gotten numbers emails from Kotaku readers, asking me a variety of questions.…

How To Make Pokémon Coloring Books Horrifying

If you want to make Pocket Monster coloring books scary, don’t just color between the lines. Draw stuff between them. These wonderful doodles were done by Twitter user Bankokukun. They are brilliant nightmare fuel. We have seen this kind of thing before. It was frightening then, and it’s frightening now. For more of Bankokukun’s art,…

An Inside Look At How Anime Is Made 

Ever wonder how anime is made? This is a window into how animation studio Kyoto Animation produces its work. Here, the anime is Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions. Via Naver and Oeker, the screenshots below were taken from the anime’s Blu-ray release and show the process. You can see the rough animation being drawn, images…

The Most Amazing Things You Can Buy At Tokyo Game Show

Tokyo Game Show is as much about going shopping as it is playing games. Most of the major game publishers have two booths at TGS: One with game demos, and one selling merch. Some of it’s available elsewhere in Japan, some of it’s only available here. And most of it is really cool. Above: A…

A Video Tour Of The Tokyo Game Show Floor

Let us take you on a magical tour of the Tokyo Game Show floor! Brian Ashcraft and I show you what’s hot at the Capcom, Sega, Square Enix, and Sony booths, plus more. We discover the secret Secret of Mana area as well as delicious plastic meat. Enjoy!

Here’s the Japanese special edition for Secret of Mana As you can see, it is pretty hot shit. You got your game, your soundtrack, figurines of the three characters, and then a freaking pop-up book with the Mana tree, so you can set the figures next to the tree and recreate the game’s iconic cover…

As you get off the train for Tokyo Game Show, you’re greeted by the main characters of every Final Fantasy. It’s an ad for a 30th anniversary art exhibition starting in January here in Tokyo. I went up and down stairs until I found Terra and Bartz. (Well, Tina and Butz.)

I Played Mario Kart VR And It Was Pretty Okay

Mario Kart Arcade GP VR isn’t a game that you can buy, but a virtual reality installation in Bandai Namco’s VR Zone attraction in Shinjuku, Tokyo. It promises to put you in the driver’s seat for a Mario Kart race, and that it does. It’s pretty fun, but you’re not really missing out on much…

Nintendo Games Used To Be Released On Japanese PCs

Nintendo characters very rarely appear on non-Nintendo hardware, but that wasn’t always the case. For a few years after the release of the original Famicom in 1983, Nintendo licensed its games to Hudson Soft, which produced versions for the major Japanese PC platforms of the day. As of late, many of the game shops in…